


songbird in the rubble

by lavitanuova



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams, F/M, Fix-It, Great Depression, Grief/Mourning, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Japanese-American Character, Post-World War II, Second Chances, love never dies au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26793058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavitanuova/pseuds/lavitanuova
Summary: When she wakes she will no longer be Christine Daae or even Christine de Chagny but just one in a long, long line of women widowed by war. When she wakes she will be thirty-eight years old and jobless with a child: there is no more need for girls in sequined dresses singing about love. She does not think that even if someone paid her the world, she would be able to sing again. It is an age of passenger pigeons, not songbirds, and Christine is decidedly the latter.-- in which christine is a former flapper struggling to provide for her son alone in post-world war two new york when she's approached by a mysterious man calling himself mr. y
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	songbird in the rubble

**Author's Note:**

> playing very fast and very loose with history please tell me if i got anything wrong (esp. with meg- am neither japanese nor american nor living in the wake of ww2) + in this au the de changys lost it all bc of the great depression not bc of gambling debts however they did take out some loans that they couldn't pay back

Christine Daae dreams of lights.

In her dreams, it's always 1925. She's all of eighteen years old, fresh-faced, honey-voiced: kohl on her eyelids and a song on her tongue. New York spins around her, a city of glamour and gold and glitz. A place where she can be anything she wants to be, a place of endless possibilities. 

In her dreams she's in a theatre, the beading on her dress shining in the spotlight. In another world, she'd hope no one can see her makeup sheen from the sweat, but she doesn't have to worry about that anymore. Not with her Angel guiding her, her Angel protecting her. Her cares are brushed away like the autumn leaves in Central Park, skittering across the grass in the breeze- gone is the fear of this big strange new city, gone is the grief over her father's death, gone is everything except the music and the lights. She commands the stage, this teenage girl in bejeweled heels and headband, and when she spins the fringe of her dress flies up, just enough to make the crowd roar. After this, the other girls will head up to speakeasies, mingle with boys in bowties, and sip giggle water from slim glass flutes. She won't be there, however. She'll be with her Angel, and that's all she needs. 

In her dreams a peroxide-blonde named Gima Meguri sees her standing lost in a corner on her first day in the city, and she takes Christine by the hand and teaches her to do the Charleston. Their tap shoes fly over the hardwood floor, and soon they're spinning around so fast that the lights leave trails like they're shooting stars. When they get tired, they stumble through the streets of New York, dodging pickpockets and the disapproving stares of the elderly. Christine asks her how she learnt to dance, and Meg takes them both uptown to the Broadway theatres, where the girls have hair so short that they look like boys and strings of pearls hang from their swan-like necks. She introduces Christine to her mother, and suddenly her name is Chrissy and she's performing to crowds in velvet seats, and suddenly she finds that her true home has been the stage all along.

In her dreams she opens her dressing-room door to find a boy named Raoul de Changy with white-blonde hair and big doe-like eyes. She squeals with excitement, he hands her a rose, and they sit amongst the bouquets from her admirers (though she doesn't care for a single one of them) and talk till late about Europe and the terror of boats and the little boy on the beach with the blood-red scarf. He asks her to go out for dinner, but she turns him down. When he leaves, all the other janes cluster about her and tell her he's a sheik, they hear he's got the bees, when are they getting married again? She laughs and fends their questions off, but it turns out it's not until a little while later, when they're on the rooftop of the theatre looking down at the automobiles speeding back and forth on the New York streets, her makeup running and his smart suit crumpled, that the two of them realise they're in love.

Their wedding is in the spring of 1926, and together they have five more years of lights and splendour before the world tips on its side, before the dream turns into a nightmare (or perhaps it already was one)-

What Christine Daae does not dream about:

\- those flooded dark cellars, full of candles and flowers and music and music and music.  
\- a voice that she tells herself she never wants to hear again. she almost tricks herself into believing it.  
\- watching the theatre burn in the night, all that glitz and glamour going up in smoke.  
\- clearing out her cabinets for all the jewelry that she can sell.  
\- her son complaining of his empty stomach, and skipping another meal to keep him fed.  
\- the inexplicable vanishing of her best friend and her mother.  
\- the crackle of the radio broadcast announcing the start of five more years of war.

What Christine Daae wishes she does not dream about:

\- the cool emptiness of the other side of her double bed.

In her dreams she awakes in her bedroom, morning light filtering not through the ragged curtains of the Manhattan apartment but the magnificent sheer lace drapery of the Paris townhouse. She turns, and she sees him lying next to her, his white-blonde hair mussed the way it always is when he wakes up. His blue eyes open, and he smiles at her, and every part of her body screams _I miss you I miss you I miss you_ all at once so loudly it's a wonder he doesn't hear it. They're still young in this dream, still blushy newly-weds, and when you're twenty years old on the deathbed of the Roaring Twenties everything seems indestructible, most of all yourself.

"Little Lotte," he murmurs, still half-asleep.

She smiles back at him, murmurs " _mon cher_ " back. Every morning before their son was born and their alarm was no longer the sunrise but the wailing of a baby boy, they'd say these exact words to each other. She wants to say a thousand other things, though, but the dream won't let her.

And about then, this is when she will blink.

She will blink, and the scene will be transformed, and nothing will ever be the same again. He'll be lying there, in that horrid military uniform he'd donned for a party once, never expecting to have to wear one for real, and she'll wait for him to wake up and smile but he won't, he won't, and outside the bombs fall on Paris like fireworks on New Year's Day. She'll shake him, beg him to awake, and Gustav will tug on her sleeve and ask for _maman_ but she doesn't care she just needs him to wake up wake up wake up. The blood will stain the silken bedsheets like a rose, like a scarf in cold grey surf.

When she wakes she will no longer be Christine Daae or even Christine de Changy but just one in a long, long line of women widowed by war. When she wakes she will be thirty-eight years old and jobless with a child: there is no more need for girls in sequined dresses singing about love. She does not think that even if someone paid her the world, she would be able to sing again. It is an age of passenger pigeons, not songbirds, and Christine is decidedly the latter.

But she will not have woken yet, and so she will watch as the man who used to be Raoul de Changy opens his eyes. They are not warm blue any more, but pale and empty and unseeing. The scar on his neck will unstitch itself, like they're rowing out of the lair once again, feeling His eyes on her back. Her husband will smile, and he will not say "little Lotte" or "good morning", not anymore.

"Debts made to Death must always be repaid," he will say, "and we know it better than anyone else, don't we? There won't be any happy endings now, Christine. Fate has made sure of it."

He will draw a line across his throat, then, and Christine will wake.

She will wake, and it will be the spring of 1946, and when she checks her mailbox, today will be the day she receives a very strange letter indeed.

A letter from a man who calls himself Mr Y.  
A letter that invites her to a Manhattan opera house.  
A letter from someone she has not met in twenty years.


End file.
